Nerva's 'Senate'

The senate had never been a good barometer of anything other than what extremely rich men in rome thought abouttin. It was a sure bet that if a man was the senate's preferred candidate, then he was going to run into difficulties elsewhere. Being old and childless was not necessarily a problem, but his total lack of military experience and the fact that the public at large had no idea who the heki was were going to come back to haunt him.